Orchids & Onions

May 25, 2013

ORCHID: To Anthony Cafaro Sr., for being named an icon of the commercial real estate industry by Real Estate Forum magazine in its May edition.

ONION: To Liberty School District employee unions that have still not agreed to join a health care consortium or make another substantial change to reduce the health care cost to taxpayers. Liberty, in state fiscal emergency since 2011, needs $2.3 million to cover its employees, an amount that the Ohio fiscal oversight commission says is far more than necessary.

ORCHID: To Trumbull County commissioners for requesting an audit of Sunshine of Warren Trumbull County Inc., and pointing out the section of the Ohio Revised Code that shows the agency is a public one subject to transparency. Commissioners should agree to foot half of the bill for the audit since the county and city created Sunshine.

ONION: To Warren Mayor Doug Franklin, for suggesting that a private accounting report would suffice, instead of a state audit, in evaluating Sunshine.

ORCHID: To everyone who put the flags on the veterans' graves at All Souls Cemetery recently. This the first year the recently retired Polish American Legion did not take on the project. Hoping for 15 volunteers, nearly 100 showed up.

ORCHID: To former Howland resident Molly Marino, founder of the Chicago English Bulldog Rescue, for staging a last-moment fund-raiser to spearhead a massive rescue operation at a puppy mill in Iowa. Marino's group rescued 23 English Bulldogs.

ORCHID: To Warren G. Harding graduate and Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, winner of the prestigious 2013 Bradley Prize. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which awards the prize, describes Ailes as a ''visionary of American journalism.''